Out on a Limb: Selected Writing, 1989-2021

by Andrew Sullivan

Overview

Andrew Sullivan, “one of the most influential journalists of the last three decades” (The New York Times) and founding editor of The Daily Dish presents a collection of 60 his most iconic and powerful essays of social and political commentary from The New Republic, The Atlantic, The New York Times Magazine, New York magazine, and more.

Over the course of his career, Andrew Sullivan has never shied away from staking out bold positions on social and political issues. A fiercely independent conservative, in 1989 he wrote the first national cover story in favor of marriage equality, and then an essay, “The Politics of Homosexuality,” in The New Republic in 1993, an article called the most consequential of the decade in the gay rights movement. A pioneer of online journalism, he started blogging in 2000 and helped define the new medium with his blog, The Daily Dish. In 2007, he was one of the first political writers to champion the presidential campaign of Barack Obama, and his cover story for The Atlantic, “Why Obama Matters,” was seen as a milestone in that campaign’s messaging. In the past five years, he has proved a vocal foe both of Donald Trump and of wokeness on the left. Loved and loathed by both left and right, Sullivan is in a tribe of one.

Bold, timely, and thought-provoking, this collection of “trenchant observations from an influential journalist” (Kirkus Reviews) on culture, politics, religion, and philosophy demonstrates why he continues to be ranked among the most intriguing and important public intellectuals in US media.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781501155895
Publisher:	Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster
Publication date:	08/10/2021
Pages:	576
Sales rank:	459,593
Product dimensions:	6.40(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.60(d)

About the Author

Andrew Sullivan is one of today’s most provocative social and political commentators. A former editor of The New Republic, he was the founding editor of The Daily Dish, and has been a regular writer for The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, Time, Newsweek, New York magazine, The Sunday Times (London), and now The Weekly Dish. He lives in Washington, DC, and Provincetown, Massachusetts.

Table of Contents

Introduction xv

Here Comes the Groom 1

August 27, 1989 | The New Republic

The Two Faces of Bensonhurst 7

July 1, 1990 | The New Republic

Gay Life, Gay Death: The Siege of a Subculture 15

December 17, 1990 | The New Republic

Taken Unseriously 31

May 6, 1991 | The New Republic

Quilt 35

November 9, 1992 | The New Republic

The Politics of Homosexuality 39

May 10, 1993 | The New Republic

Alone Again, Naturally 59

November 28, 1994 | The New Republic

When Plagues End: Notes on the Twilight of an Epidemic 75

November 10, 1996 | The New York Times

My America 97

November 24, 1996 | The Sunday Times

The Princess Bride 101

September 21, 1997 | The New Republic

Unsung Heroine 105

September 27, 1998 | The New York Times

Going Down Screaming 109

October 11, 1998 | The New York Times

What's So Cad about Hate? 127

September 26, 1999 | The New York Times

The He Hormone 145

April 2, 2000 | The New York Times Magazine

The "Invisible Man" 163

January 12, 2003 | Time magazine

I Am Bear; Hear Me Roar 165

August 3, 2003 | Salon

Integration Day 171

May 17, 2004 | The New York Times

Log Cabin Republican 175

January 12, 2005 | The Dish

Life Lesson 181

February 7, 2005 | The New Republic

Superstar 185

April 17, 2005 | The New Republic

Crisis of Faith 189

May 2, 2005 | The New Republic

Still Here, So Sorry 205

June 21, 2005 | The Advocate

The End of Gay Culture 209

October 24, 2005 | The New Republic

The Abolition of Torture 225

December 19, 2005 | The New Republic

Islamo-Bullies Get a Free Ride from the West 237

February 12, 2006 | The Sunday Times

Gay Cowboys Embraced by Redneck Country 241

February 26, 2006 | The Sunday Times

When Not Seeing Is Believing 245

October 2, 2006 | Time magazine

The Reagan of the Left? 253

May 24, 2007 | The Dish

A Married Man 257

August 21, 2007 | The Dish

Goodbye to All That: Why Obama Matters 261

December 2007 | The Atlantic

How Did I Get Iraq Wrong? 275

March 21, 2008 | Slate

Phobia at the Gates 279

May 14, 2008 | The Washington Post

Why I Blog 283

November 2008 | The Atlantic

Republican Taliban Declare Jihad on Obama 297

February 15, 2009 | The Sunday Times

Mad, Maddening America, the Wisest of All 301

February 22, 2009 | The Sunday Times

Obama's Race Dream Is Swiftly Shackled 305

July 26, 2009 | The Sunday Times

Leaving the Right 309

December 1, 2009 | The Dish

Obama, Trimmer 313

December 2, 2009 | The Dish

Dear Ta-Nehisi 317

December 1, 2011 | The Dish

Why Continue to Build the Settlements?

March 30, 2012 | The Dish

Christianity in Crisis 327

April 2, 2012 | Newsweek

The First Elite Conservative to Say Enough 335

July 2, 2012 | The Dish

Thatcher, Liberator 339

April 8, 2013 | The Dish

Surprised by Grief 343

August 6, 2013 | The Dish

Rush Limbaugh Knows Nothing about Christianity 347

December 3, 2013 | The Dish

What Is the Meaning of Pope Francis? 353

December 17, 2013 | The Dish

Democracies End When They Are Too Democratic 379

May 1, 2016 | New York magazine

I Used to Be a Human Being

September 19, 2016 | New York magazine

America and the Abyss 415

November 3, 2016 | New York magazine

America Wasn't Built for Humans 423

September 19, 2017 | New York magazine

Kaepernick's Message Is Getting Lost-Along with the Facts on Race and Police Violence 441

September 29, 2017 | New York magazine

We All Live on Campus Now 445

February 9, 2018 | New York magazine

The Poison We Pick 451

February 20, 2018 | New York magazine

Just Say Yes to Drugs 469

May 25, 2018 | New York magazine

America's New Religions 473

December 7, 2018 | New York magazine

The Nature of Sex 479

February 1, 2019 | New York magazine

Why Joe Biden Might Be the Best Bet to Beat Trump 485

May 3, 2019 | New York magazine

A Plague Is an Apocalypse. But It Can Bring a New World. 491

July 21, 2020 | New York magazine

The Unbearable Whiteness of the Classics 509

February 5, 2021 | The Weekly Dish

Two Sexes. Infinite Genders. 515

February 26, 2021 | The Weekly Dish

"What Happened to You?" 519

July 9, 2021 | The Weekly Dish

Acknowledgments 527

Index 529

Editorial Reviews

07/12/2021

Sixty essays from Sullivan (Virtually Normal), former editor of the New Republic, are collected in this frank critique of America’s social and political culture. The pieces, which come from the New Republic, the New York Times and New York magazine, among other publications, are organized chronologically. “The Princess Bride,” from 1997, studies the phenomenon of Princess Diana’s fame, while 2007’s “Goodbye to All That: Why Obama Matters” sees Sullivan arguing that the case for an Obama presidency “has less to do with him than with the moment he is meeting.” “Why I Blog,” from 2008, meanwhile, takes a look at Sullivan’s early dabbling with online journalism, wherein he found blogging an “exhilarating literary liberation,” and 2016’s “Democracies End When They Are Too Democratic” uses Plato’s Republic to study Trump’s presidency. The author takes provocative views on such topics as campus culture (which he admonishes for turning “away from liberal education... toward the imperatives of an identity-based ‘social justice’ movement”) and the concept of hate crimes (he’s wary of them as “an oddly biased category”)—and readers across the political spectrum will find themselves under fire. Fans of Sullivan’s work are sure to enjoy having his intellectual curiosity and impassioned prose collected in one place. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

[These] essays don’t just communicate his thoughts, they communicate his heart. . . . Even his most passionate arguments are thoughtfully delivered, deeply rooted in his philosophy and faith. . . . When I reached the end of his book, I felt a sense of gratitude. . . . For 32 years a thoughtful man has demonstrated the courage of his convictions and challenged his readers time and again. . . . Read Out on a Limb for the snapshots of recent history. Read it to better understand the many journeys of one of America’s most important public intellectuals. But most of all read this book to see what it looks like when a thoughtful man tries his best to tell the truth and let the chips fall where they may.” —David French, New York Times

“A thrilling intellectual romp through the last 30 years of political and cultural debate . . . [Sullivan] is a writer in the tradition of Samuel Johnson, bringing all available faculties—intellectual, emotional, moral, and spiritual—to bear in his work.” —American Conservative

“Astringent and humane, and crucially, unpredictable." —Dwight Garner, New York Times

“Our last remaining major contrarian: a thinker who’s devoted his career to the proposition that even those with whom he agrees can err.” —Stephen L. Carter, Bloomberg

“[Out on a Limb] gathers 60 pieces from the past three decades that serve as both a chronicle of [Sullivan’s] life and a record of significant transformations in American culture. . . . Trenchant observations from an influential journalist.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Fans of Sullivan’s work are sure to enjoy having his intellectual curiosity and impassioned prose collected in one place.” —Publishers Weekly

PRAISE FOR ANDREW SULLIVAN:

“One of the most influential journalists of the last three decades.” —Ben Smith, The New York Times

“In my view the best and bravest commentator of our time. Really, the nearest thing to Orwell we have.” —Niall Ferguson

“The most important writer during the Trump era.” —Joe Scarborough

"No writer of comparable gifts [spoke out for same-sex marriage] earlier, pushed harder against what seemed at the time like an unassailable consensus, engaged as many critics (left and right, gay and straight) and addressed himself to as many audiences as Sullivan. No intellectual did as much to weave together the mix of arguments and intuitions that defines today’s emerging consensus on the issue. . . . I hear echoes of arguments that Andrew Sullivan, and often Andrew Sullivan alone, was making thirty years ago in almost every conversation and argument I’ve had about gay marriage in the last ten years. There’s no other issue and no other writer where the connection between things I read as a teenager and lines I hear today is as clear and direct and obvious. And if that isn’t evidence of distinctive, far-reaching influence then I don’t know what is." —Ross Douthat, The New York Times

“Andrew has never been a prophet, so much as a joyous heretic. Andrew taught me that you do not have to pretend to be smarter than you are. . . . When I read Andrew, I generally thought he was dedicated to the work of being honest. I did not think he was always honest. I don’t think anyone can be. But I thought he held ‘honesty’ as a standard—something that can’t be said of the large number of charlatans in this business.” —Ta-Nehisi Coates, Atlantic

“Andrew Sullivan has been more honest and open-minded than just about anybody else on the right.” —David Brooks, The New York Times

“He was without a natural constituency. He has built one by the force of his own personality, his arguments, and his talent. He is a valiant man.” —Matthew Parris, The Times (of London)

“Andrew Sullivan has done for homosexuality what John Stuart Mill did for freedom. . . . Only those familiar with the deep wells of the history of political philosophy . . . will recognize the scale of his achievement.” —Kenneth Minogue, National Review

“Who is the most influential public intellectual of the last twenty years? I'm inclined to pick Andrew Sullivan. He is hardly the only person behind the struggle for gay marriage, but he was one of the first—and the most relentless. And if one had to pick a single individual who embodied, drove, and represented the evolution of media to online forms, Andrew Sullivan would be a good choice. . . . He embodied the classic blogosphere like no other writer, as he fine-tuned and mastered the art of the blog as an ongoing critical—and indeed substantive—dialog with oneself.” —Tyler Cowen, Vox

LOVE UNDETECTABLE:

"One of the great pleasures of this book lies in watching Sullivan's mind at work . . . [his essays] are filled with a passion and heat that most cultural criticism lacks." —Katie Roiphe, The Washington Post

"Sullivan has found meaning in chaos. . . . With its paradoxical sense of beauty amid pain, Love Undetectable has something of the quality of a war memoir." —Andrew Delbanco, The New York Times Book Review

"On display here are all of the author's many strengths—compelling, poetic prose style, some keen observations on faith. . . . Sullivan offers a moving defense of the open gay male urban sexual culture and his participation in it." —Liz Galst, The Boston Globe

From the Publisher

2021-06-16
The veteran journalist collects his controversial views on sex, religion, politics, and plagues.

Sullivan, whose essays, reviews, articles, and blog posts have appeared in the New Republic (where he was an editor), the New York Times, New York magazine, and the Weekly Dish newsletter, gathers 60 pieces from the past three decades that serve as both a chronicle of his life and a record of significant transformations in American culture. Describing himself as having “a querulous, insistent curiosity that sometimes relishes the hostility it often provokes,” Sullivan is not surprised to have incited strong responses: “An essay insisting on the biological roots of masculinity enraged some feminists; my opposition to ‘hate crime’ legislation maddened my fellow gays; my account of the moment AIDS in America no longer qualified as a plague was denounced.” His attack on the use of torture by the Bush administration infuriated the right, just as his attack on critical race and gender theory incensed the left. As a gay man, Sullivan has lived through a sea change in attitudes about homosexuality and gender, from grudging allowances for domestic partnerships to the legalization of gay marriage. His own marriage, in 2007, seemed momentous. With mixed feelings, he observes the erosion of any “single gay identity, let alone a single look or style or culture.” He argues that “distinctive gayness” was “integral” to gay identity. “It helped define us not only to the world but also to ourselves,” he writes. “Letting go is as hard as it is liberating, as saddening as it is invigorating.” Testosterone therapy, which he began in 2000 as a result of being HIV-positive, made him viscerally aware of the surge of energy, aggression, lust, and anger that resulted from what he called the “He Hormone.” Other pieces reveal Sullivan’s thoughts on Christianity, the death of his beloved beagle, Princess Diana as a cultural icon, Obama as a beacon of hope, and, most recently, Covid-19.

Trenchant observations from an influential journalist.

Kirkus Reviews